The Cave

Lost World Cave

Corrigan Clay is a Jesus-follower in Haiti. He recently posted this poem on his Facebook page and we wanted to republish it here. If you’re going through a particularly dark time, this might be for you.

The Cave

He lead me away from the place I met him and deep down in a cave

out from high-fiving camp songs of how a logo death can save

as void of the stench of real life and death as his abandoned grave

from the fattened fridge to the parched land of the emaciated crave

To the hunger and the thirst and the rule of the depraved

to the place I was so empty that I could not digest the food he gave

to the place where sand could baptise me and sweat was how I bathed

under water, under fire, under grindstone, under lathe

Undertaker, under giver, under master, under slave

to the back routes of the cinderblock and the rubble and unpaved

From the land of wealthy free to the home of jobless brave

From the place of full confidence in how one should behave

to the blurring of the sacred lines they said he had engraved

from the arrogance of the guilting manner in which the proud forgave

From the faceless grace as principle where presence can not scathe

He brought me crippled and battle worn to the mouth of this cave…

and here I faced the fears of all the losses I have known

and saw an altar built to burn up all I thought I’d owned

and laying Isaac on it called to mind my Ishmael

and how my name and destiny were now destined to fail

To enter his echoing chamber denied the first sounds I had heard

Like shredding Moses’ map to make bedding for His bird

But if all light and laughter turned their back to sun and breath

Himlessness would be a darkness beyond the blackest death

All the hope that rests upon the thought of Him, and His promises to heal

are vaporous shadows of the chance of meeting Him for real

His self portraits and his mirrors are the most distracting of all idols

Iconoclastic Anarchist, He breaks the chains of pietistic bridles

And if he be inside this cave, where nobody can see

I will charge, starving, naked, frostbitten, with broken teeth and knees

I will scramble over cutting rocks, past Caspar Friederich’s trees.

I will lose my eyes and forget the prize and leave what’s left of me

Because if your eyes will meet the cavities of mine in that that dank and dreaded hole,